Bourbon Springs Box Set: Volume III, Books 7-9 (Bourbon Springs Box Sets Book 3)

by Jennifer Bramseth

  Once they reached her parking lot, the downtown crowds were noticeably thinner, but the streets were still closed.

  After entering her condo, Jorrie shut the door behind them and took a deep breath. She was hot, tired, and sweaty. Jorrie momentarily entertained the idea of showering (and other interesting activities) with Mack but put the idea aside. But they still had a long, hot day ahead of them with plenty of hours still to be spent outside at the cookout with Albert. No need to get clean just to get sweaty again, and she knew if they made love once more, she’d fall asleep and be conked out for several hours, considering how weary she already was.

  But more importantly, Albert would not appreciate it if they stood him up or were late for the promised Independence Day cookout, and Jorrie didn’t want to disappoint the man. She’d only met him once but already had developed quite the soft spot for him.

  After quick bathroom trips and stopping to down a few glasses of water, they departed Jorrie’s parking lot by using the side entrance instead of the entrance on Main Street. The back streets were still closed, but the pedestrian traffic on them was negligible, and Mack and Jorrie soon arrived at Minnick’s, ready to do battle with the other holiday shoppers prepping for their evening cookouts.

  Mack grabbed a cart and pulled a list from the back pocket of his shorts.

  “A man with a grocery list? I’m impressed,” she said as they moved into the store.

  “I take after my grandpa in that regard. I usually take his and make my own so I can read it. His handwriting is not the best. Although I have to confess that this list didn’t start out as a list.”

  “How did it start out?”

  They were examining the locally sourced tomatoes, trying to find the perfect one for their hamburgers. Mack studied and rejected several plump ones before grabbing a large specimen and placing it in the cart. He then held the list up, quickly flipping it from side to side.

  “One side’s a list, the other side has lyrics. I scratch ’em down everywhere. I’m always writing.”

  Unable to read the words on the lyrics side, Jorrie reached for the paper but Mack snatched it back.

  “That song’s not done,” he said.

  “So no one can see—or hear—one of your works in progress?”

  “Yes, but it’s not just that,” Mack said, a short pause preceding his answer. “I still owe you for that ice cream, remember? I can’t just give away my work. I need to make sure I have sufficient currency to repay my debts.”

  “You didn’t eat that much ice cream today, Mack.”

  “I know, but the summer has just begun.”

  “Well, there are other ways you might repay your debt to me.”

  “I like the sound of that.” He turned away, smiling, and placed a head of lettuce in the cart.

  They picked up ground beef, hot dogs, chips, drinks and buns. Before they got in line, Mack checked the list and saw that he’d forgotten an item.

  “Beer cheese,” he declared. “Can’t go home without that stuff. Pa loves it.”

  “Is that good for him at his age?” Jorrie asked as she followed Mack back through the store to the dairy case.

  “Probably not, but it’s his special thing. I guess it could be worse. At least he doesn’t smoke. Has a nip of Garnet almost every night though.”

  “No harm in that, I suppose,” Jorrie said.

  “And probably none in this,” Mack said. He picked up a container of beer cheese and handed it to her.

  “Hades hot? He eats this stuff?”

  Mack took the beer cheese from her and dropped it into the cart on top of the hot dogs. “The man is into his late eighties, so I figure that he can eat what he wants, within reason.”

  “I had no idea Albert was that old!”

  “He’d love to hear you say that,” Mack suggested and pointed the cart back toward the front of the store.

  “He seems to be in good health,” she said.

  “Not really. He’s got congestive heart failure. I’m afraid that’s what will get him in the end,” Mack said sadly as they passed through the frozen goods again.

  Jorrie stopped and asked whether they shouldn’t pick up some ice cream for later.

  “Haven’t you had enough today?” he taunted.

  “It is the Fourth of July. It’s unpatriotic not to eat ice cream. And Albert would love it.”

  Jorrie walked to the case behind which a wall of cartons of ice cream waited for selection in orderly frozenness. She spotted her favorite flavor, fudge brownie, and clutched the handle of the freezer door, ready to make her selection.

  “This was supposed to be a surprise, but Albert and I are going to make some ice cream tonight,” Mack said, causing Jorrie to drop her hand from the freezer door.

  “Really? Which flavor?”

  “That’s part of the surprise,” Mack said. “I promise that it will be unique. Doubt you’ve had anything like it.”

  They reached the front of the store and saw long lines at every open register. Mack was heading for the shortest and closest line when he was hailed from behind by a female voice. Jorrie turned to see an apprehensive older woman walking toward them.

  “Hi, Mrs. Vinson,” Mack greeted her and moved the cart out of the path of other shoppers and up against a nearly emptied display of potato chips at the end of an aisle. He introduced the woman to Jorrie, and the two nodded at each other pleasantly before June turned her attention fully to Mack.

  “Mr. Blanton, I just wanted to apologize to you for everything.”

  Mack blinked several times. “Why would you need to apologize to me, ma’am?”

  “For Sims, and for Gary.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Mack said.

  “First, I’m sorry that Gary’s been acting up in class lately. But I suppose you can guess why.”

  “Something to do with Mr. Pierson?” Mack guessed.

  “Yes, that good-for-nothing,” June spat. “After he came to me with that tale of his about how you supposedly got him fired, I was done with him.”

  “Well, I regret what happened,” Mack said with well-chosen words.

  “And poor Gary,” June said, looking around, apparently expecting Gary to appear. “He liked Sims and was upset when I sent the man packing. My other kids—my grandkids—they’re fine. But I just can’t seem to do right by Gary.”

  “You’re doing the best you can, and that’s all anyone can ask. And I know Gary has his problems. But he’ll work through them.”

  June gave Mack a quick hug and patted him on the back.

  “He’s a gem, you know,” June said to Jorrie. “You’d better hang onto him.”

  “I plan on it.” Jorrie moved close to Mack’s side and slipped her hand into the back pocket of his shorts.

  June’s eyes bulged, and she giggled when she saw Jorrie’s gesture. June excused herself and said she needed to look for Gary, leaving Jorrie with a pink-faced Mack.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” he said to her.

  “Why? Because I made you blush?”

  “Not only blush.”

  Jorrie looked down and spotted the distinctive bulge in the front of his shorts he was trying to hide behind the cart. She gave his bottom a little squeeze through his shorts before removing her hand from his pocket, and he gave a little cry.

  “There will be consequences for that,” he said as he pulled the cart closer to the front of his body.

  She winked at him.

  “I certainly hope so.”

  18

  Half an hour later they were at Mack’s house, unloading the groceries from the back of his truck.

  “You let Mack do that!” Albert barked. He was standing at a side door to the house, which opened into the kitchen, and holding the door open for them.

  “I don’t mind helping, Mr. Blanton.” She placed several bags on the kitchen table.

  “And I told you not to call me that,” he said. Albert took her by the hand and pulled her int
o the sitting room toward the front of the house.

  “Stop hitting on my girlfriend, Pa,” Mack said before he went back outside to retrieve the rest of the groceries.

  “Maybe I’ll steal her from you,” Albert said. He dropped into a chair, laughing.

  “You might just have a chance,” Jorrie said. She took a seat on the couch next to his chair. “Mack tells me that you have some kind of special ice cream as a surprise.”

  “And it was supposed to be just that! But he went off and told you? I’m gonna—”

  “He only told me about it when I wanted to buy some at the store. He didn’t tell me the flavor and said that I’d probably never had anything like it.”

  “And that is true,” Albert said, nodding. “But don’t try to get me to spill my secret. It’s special. Haven’t made the stuff in years, but thought tonight was special enough that we needed to do it.”

  “So you made it especially for the holiday?”

  “No, Jorrie,” Albert chuckled. “Made it because Mack said you were comin’ to dinner tonight.”

  “That’s so nice, Mr.—I mean Albert,” Jorrie said. “How is it that a charmer like you doesn’t have his own girlfriend?”

  Albert grunted. “I’ve outlived all the good gals.”

  “Oh, surely not.” She caught Mack’s eye as he watched them from the doorway between the sitting room and the kitchen. “I mean, a man like you must have so many years ahead of him and—”

  “Hold on there. Just how old you do you think I am?”

  “Oh, don’t make me answer that.” Jorrie spied Mack in the kitchen, who was trying not to laugh.

  “No, you brought it up, so you tell me.” He sat up straight in his chair and ran a hand over his hair, as if sprucing up for a quick photo.

  “Well, I don’t know,” Jorrie hedged. “Maybe in your seventies? Late sixties?”

  “Seventies? Add about another fifteen, nearly twenty years, girl!”

  “I never would’ve guessed.”

  Albert cackled with delight.

  “Mack, if you don’t marry this one, I sure as hell will.”

  “Behave, Pa,” Mack called from the kitchen

  “He’d better hope I behave with you around,” Albert said with a wink at her.

  Mack announced he was going to start the grill and went outside. After the door slammed behind him, Albert leaned forward toward Jorrie.

  “You know he had a fiancée down in Nashville for a while?”

  “Well, we haven’t talked about that, but I think I remember something from the news about it.” She felt embarrassed and confused why Albert would bring up such a sensitive topic.

  Albert grunted contempt.

  “I can’t even remember the girl’s name. Never met her, never spoke to her. Saw her picture once in some magazine,” he said. “Mack certainly never brought her to see me, that’s for damned sure. Not like you.”

  Jorrie was about to respond when Mack returned from outside.

  “Jorrie, can you come help me with something in here?” he called from the kitchen.

  Jorrie popped up from her seat, happy to have something to do. But Albert wasn’t so pleased.

  “And just what am I supposed to do all alone in here?”

  “How about behave, like I told you?”

  “Bah!”

  Jorrie touched Albert’s shoulder and told him they’d purchased some more beer cheese. “Want me to bring you some? And something to drink?” she asked.

  “Maybe I oughta jump in line and propose to you myself right now.”

  With a pat to his shoulder, she promised to bring Albert the beer cheese, crackers, and something to drink, and went to the kitchen.

  “I think there’s a song in there somewhere, don’t you?” she asked Mack, who had just pulled out a carving board. “Grandpa runs off with grandson’s girlfriend?”

  “Please tell me there’s not any danger of that.”

  She moved to his side.

  “If you come closer, I can prove it to you.”

  Accepting the invitation, Mack put his arms around her waist, dipped his head, and kissed her.

  “Been a long time since this morning,” he said between kisses as he moved his lips to her neck.

  “We are going back up that hill tonight, right?” she asked breathily. “Just you and me, no Albert?”

  “He’d better not try to follow us up there,” Mack said, his lips against her neck.

  “Hey!” Albert called from the other room. “What’re you two doing in there? Or do I want to know?”

  “None of your business!” Mack yelled as he and Jorrie released each other.

  “Then that means I definitely want to know what you’re doing in there!”

  “Is he always like this?” Jorrie asked as she opened the fridge to retrieve the beer cheese.

  “Ornery? Yes. But this feisty, happy, and silly? No. He’s only been goofy like this since you had that Sunday dinner with us. You’ve made him pretty damn happy. Just like me.”

  “You two are quite the charmers,” Jorrie said as she popped the top off the beer cheese and reached for a box of crackers on the counter.

  “Now you know where I get all my sexy and sophisticated moves.”

  Jorrie took the crackers and beer cheese to Albert, who thanked her profusely and declared himself “tickled” that Mack had remembered to get the extra-hot version of beer cheese. After suggesting to Albert that he eat the beer cheese slowly and in small amounts, she returned to the kitchen to get something for him to drink while Mack went out to check the grill.

  While she was getting ice from the freezer for Albert’s drink, Jorrie spotted a small crumpled paper on the kitchen floor, looking like trash yet familiar. Jorrie bent to pick it up and as she straightened, she recognized it as the grocery list Mack had shown her in the store.

  A furious internal debate bloomed inside her whether to peek at the lyrics on the other side.

  But she knew better than to mess with Mack’s music.

  With effort, she smoothed the paper and placed it list-side up at Mack’s spot on the kitchen table. She then took Albert’s water to him, returned to the kitchen, and pulled the ground beef from the fridge in preparation to make the hamburger patties.

  Jorrie helped Mack prepare the simple cookout meal, even though Albert occasionally barked at them both from the sitting room for her to sit down since she was company. She responded by saying that she wanted to make herself useful, but Albert snorted.

  “You’re a lot more useful to me if you’re in here!” he’d cried out, his mouth full of crackers and beer cheese.

  As Mack set the table, she saw that he noticed the receipt on the table.

  “I found that on the floor,” she said as he picked the list up from the table’s surface. “I promise I didn’t look at the lyrics.”

  Mack held the paper between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. With a nod, he thanked her and stuffed the paper into his wallet, his jaw set.

  Jorrie offered to make the hamburger patties, but Mack insisted on doing it.

  “I have my own way of flavoring them that Pa likes,” he said and ripped open the package of ground beef. “Besides, go sit with him,” he said, nodding toward the sitting room. “He can’t get enough of your company.”

  “Okay, but if he tries to get me to eat that beer cheese, I’m coming back in here with you.”

  “Don’t you like beer cheese?”

  “Yeah, but not that destroy-your-taste-buds version of it.”

  Jorrie chatted and joked with Albert for the next half hour while Mack prepared the meal. She learned that Albert had retired nearly thirty years earlier from working as a cooper at Commonwealth Cooperage, about twenty miles southwest of Bourbon Springs in Littleham. His wife had died soon after his retirement, leaving him with what he called “a lot of lonely and empty years.”

  Jorrie learned that although he had his daughter, Clara, Mack’s mother, and Mack to keep him co
mpany, it was still a sad life.

  He recounted the sad time when Clara died.

  “And I have to tell you,” Albert said, “Mack and I aren’t over that. Never will be, I guess. I lost a child, he lost a mother.”

  Jorrie went back to the kitchen to help put finishing touches on the meal and get the food to the table. It was simple, typical cookout fare, but they all sat down together eager and hungry for the food. Mack’s burgers, flavored with some kind of special seasoning, were particularly good.

  But she nearly gagged when she saw Albert take the beer cheese and slather it over his thick burger as well as two hot dogs. He ate happily, a contented smile on his face, giving no indication that the spiciness of the cheese was bothersome in any way.

  Even though she’d eaten a good deal at lunch, the day had been long and tiring and she found herself ravenously hungry at dinnertime. Jorrie consumed a burger and hot dog (hold the beer cheese), plus baby carrots by the handfuls. She’d thrown a package in the cart at the grocery store to prevent her from gorging on the potato chips Mack had insisted on buying (per Albert’s instructions, of course).

  “So do we make the ice cream now?” Jorrie asked as she helped clear away dishes with Mack.

  “Nope,” Albert said. “I made it last night.”

  “I made it last night,” Mack corrected him, “with too many instructions from you. It’s a wonder we got anything done at all.”

  “You hadn’t made that stuff since you came back from Nashville, Mack. You had no idea what you were doing and needed me to—”

  Jorrie broke into a fit of laughter, and Albert stopped short.

  “You two,” she said, shaking her head and standing up as she handed some dishes to Mack. “You sound like an old married couple.”

  “Well, consider this a preview,” Albert said.

  “A preview?”

  “Sure, a preview of what it’ll be like for you two. Because someday the two of you will be an old married couple. Write it down.”